Planet Toddler

Spring, she has not sprung just yet. I’m sure our relatives and friends in the northern U.S. are faced with similar frustrations at the moment. The longer days and the date on the calendar have you itching to get out the seed catalog or the baseball mitt or the spring coat, but the conditions outside still call for two pairs of socks on your feet and a bag of kitty litter in the trunk of the car. “Man makes plans while God laughs,” someone told me once.

How many times did Bean use her toothbrush on the cat before I finally caught her? And has she used mine on him, too?

Pearly white snappers!

Google hasn’t told me conclusively whether humans can catch some sort of ailment from sharing a toothbrush with a cat. This particular cat, who is still young enough to enjoy attacking your feet if you walk by him, was being amazingly patient while Bean performed the cleaning process. As long as she doesn’t examine the orifices at the opposite end, I think she’ll avoid getting scratched.

Despite her communication issues, the Bean manages to make herself heard when it really, really counts. Meaning when she wants you to do something. I noticed this over the summer, when Bean was at the beach with Aunt Joan. They were digging in the sand with a plastic shovel, and there was a collection of plastic animals that Eve would take out of a bucket and line up carefully.

Aunt Joanie decided to make one of the animals swim.

“No,” said Bean, in a tone of voice adults reserve for the very simple. “You put it back, Joanie.” And she grabbed my sister’s arm and forced her to place the animal back where it belonged.

The Bean completed her observation group on October 25th. We had a meeting with the pediatrician, the child psychologist, the speech therapist, the nursery nurse (who played with Eve during the observation period) and a young lady from Bean’s nursery school. We perched on child-sized chairs and drank instant coffee while they explained their observational findings and the results of various assessments they’d undertaken.

“You do go and singing a song, and I dance the ballet, Mommy.”

What we have with Bean is a very friendly, happy, energetic child who is good with puzzles and numbers. She has excellent eyesight– fighter pilot eyesight, practically– and a terrific memory. But she speaks and socializes like a child of two, not one who’s nearly four.

Apparently Ms. Bean was not pleased with the sketch I made of her this evening:

“It is a sad face,” she said. “Sad Evey.”

That is some harsh scribbling. I can understand being upset about my hacky drawing of Ariel; I’m pretty sure I drew better Little Mermaids when I was ten. But I thought the little study was coming along reasonably well.

She was totally pleased with herself when she took away all the pencils and wouldn’t let me have any, though. I begged her and she said, “No, you can’t. I have the box. No pessils for Mummy.”

However, I have to say, if we’re going to pick on one another’s attempts at representative art, her photographic eye is clearly not developed AT ALL. I’ve just discovered that there are literally 432 photographs on my phone, taken today, that all look more or less like this:

Call that a self-portrait? Humph.

Unless, of course, she’s just documenting the dreadful job I did cutting her bangs. In which case: well-played, the Bean. Well-played.